so, here I am at work at 10am on a sunday, me and one of my collagues fighting with getting a linux host to boot off of Fibre-channel. I've been at the for 22 hrs now, and after a bit of googling I realise, the problem here is the Gnu Public License!

A bit of explination is in order.

In the Qlogic QLA2342's driver (actually all QLA2xxx FC-HBAs), as far as I can tell, the driver loads a firmware to the card, rather then relying on the on in the card. This used to be shipped with the driver, which in turn shipped with the kernel. recently It has been decided (I am speculating on the reasoning here, but it's the only reason I can think of, and in fairness ot the kernel developers is probily correct reasoning) that this runs afoul of the GPL, so it would no longer be shipped. This means you have to go find the firmware, and get it into the "initial ramdisk." This is a vary problimatic procedure.

Contrast this with the same situation with the CDDL, which OpenSolaris uses. Because the CDDL is only limited to affecting the single source file it applies to, It makes mixing and matching code under different licenses (even closed ones) much easier. RMS and his followers can argue about viral licensing is the only way to ensure "free as in speach" software 'till they are blue in the face, but I've still been at work for 22 hours and want to go home.

(I do not feel helpful, but it isnt letting me change that) (fixed now)